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Secret Stairs (Part III)

January 23, 2014 — Pat Bertram

[Continuation of Secret Stairs (Part I) and Secret Stairs (Part II)]

The third and final leg of the journey to search for secret stairs in Hollywood took us to the Temple Hill neighborhood. There weren’t a lot of steps to climb (only 108 compared to the more that 300 in Whitley Heights), but there were many steep hills that could have used a few stairs to make the hike easier.

This is an area was once the home of various spiritual centers, including Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophists and the Vedanta Temple:

On Vine Way, we found this graceful and winding set of 47 easy steps:

snd these private steps:

We continued to Holly Mont Drive where we saw Hollymont Castle, once Barbara Stanwyck’s estate and now owned by pianist Derek Grey. We met a man who claimed to be Derek Grey’s twin brother, and he could have been, for all I know. He confirmed that the castle was haunted.

Across from the castle was a set of 61 steps that divided into two narrow stairways.

I was disappointed when the search for secret stairs ended for the day. I’ve never known that stairs could be so romantic. I’ve seen very few staircases in the past twenty years — there was no real need for them in the high flat areas I’ve lived, and whatever steps I encountered were banal, simply a way to get from one place to another. Now I will keep an eye out for stairways, and wonder about all who have set foot on those steps.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in culture, history/myth, photography. Tags: Barbara Stanwyck, Derek Grey, secret stairs, secret stairs Los Angeles, Temple Hill, whitley heights. 4 Comments »

Secret Stairs (Part II)

January 22, 2014 — Pat Bertram

[A continuation of Secret Stairs (Part I)]

Secret. There is something about the very word that rouses our curiosity, making us wonder what dire (or delightful) truths are being kept from us. Secret societies. Secret meetings. Secret codes. Secret stairs.

Secret stairs? I’d never even heard of such a thing until a friend invited me on a trip to search out some of the secret stairs in Los Angeles. Apparently, there are many secret stairways in steep hilly neighborhoods. In the days before cars took over the city, these stairs allowed people to get down the hill to schools, markets, and trolley cars. In fact, many of the houses in these neighborhoods had no other access to the outside world than these public staircases.

We saw once public stairways, such as these steps that now go up to someone’s back yard in Whitley Heights:

We saw remnants of stairs:

We climbed stairs that meandered through a park,

old wooden stairs,

faux wood stairs,

painted stairs.

And we took these concrete stairs up to my favorite part of the hike,

this lovely secluded walkway.

There are so many wonders in the world, secret and otherwise, that it’s amazing we go about our ordinary lives without stopping more frequently to gasp at the awe of it all.

To be continued . . . Secret Stairs (Part III)

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Posted in culture, history/myth, photography. Tags: secret stairs, secret stairs Los Angeles, secrets, whitley heights. 3 Comments »

Secret Stairs (Part I)

January 21, 2014 — Pat Bertram

A friend invited me to go on a trip with her for a “secret stairs” hike in Hollywood. Even though I didn’t know what the hike was about, of course I said “yes.” I have developed the habit of saying yes to anything anyone invites me to do, even if my first inclination were to hesitate or even say no, a practice that has led me to many wonderful places and activities that I would never even thought of experiencing. Even if I weren’t already primed to accept, I’d have gone — I’ve never been able to resist anything “secret.” There are a vast number of secrets in the world, including life itself, and being gifted with an insatiable curiosity, I try to ferret out those secrets, but considering that so many secrets are . . . well, secret . . . by definition, I wouldn’t know that they even exist. And there, in a few simple words, I was being offered a chance to discover a hitherto unknown secret.

Secret stairs. Even the phrase evokes feelings of adventure, wonder, mystique.

Apparently, there are many secret stairways in Los Angeles in the steep hilly neighborhoods that were built back before cars took over the city. These stairs allowed people to get down the hill to schools, markets, and trolley cars. In fact, many of the houses in these neighborhoods had no other access to the outside world than these public staircases. The stairs were largely forgotten until Charles Fleming published his book Secret Stairs: A Walking Guide to the Historic Staircases of Los Angeles.

A friend has been doing all of the walks — 42 of them — and has finished all but the last few. The walk she invited me on was a combination of #36 and #35 in Fleming’s book. (It was such a lovely day, she decided to do two of them.)

We started out with an unplanned stop by a bit of sidewalk graffiti that seemed oddly appropriate:

Our first scheduled stop was the historic Highland Towers apartments, where William Faulkner is supposed to have lived when he worked on such films as The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not:

We passed the Hollywood Heritage Museum, and walked up Milner to the first secret staircase — the Whitley Terrace steps, an L-shaped staircase with 160 steps.

At about the ninetieth step, there was a landing with fabulous views of the High Tower residential area — not that I know what the area is, but it was an interesting sight:

I paused at the top to take a photo of the steps we had just climbed before searching out the next set of secret stairs in Hollywood. (Hint — the key to walking up huge flights of outside stairs is to stop periodically to marvel at flowers or take photos of . . . anything. That way you can catch your breath without having to admit that you have reached your limit.)

To be continued . . . (But of course, you already knew I’d be continuing this saga since the title says “Part I” and you can’t have a “Part I” without a “Part II”.)

Secret Stairs (Part II)

Secret Stairs (Part III)

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Posted in culture, history/myth, photography. Tags: Charles Fleming, High Tower residential area Hollywood, Highland Towers apartments, Hollywood stairs, secret stairs, Whitley Terrace steps, William Faulkner and Highland Towers apartments. 10 Comments »

Falls and Follies

January 18, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Ever since the death of my life mate/soul mate, I’ve made an effort to do new things, especially things I would not have had an opportunity to experience if he were alive. (It helps me make sense of his being gone. If I continued to do only what we would have done together, I’d feel as if I were wasting his death.) Now I am continuing that effort, not just to honor his death, but to help me survive a stressful family situation. Oh, who am I trying to kid? I just want to have fun!

My two most recent experiences were a trip to Palm Springs

to see the Palm Springs Follies, a Las Vegas-style production

where all the gorgeous showgirls were over 55, some even over 75! We weren’t allowed to take photos during the show, of course, so I hope they don’t mind my using their photo:

And then today I went on a hike with the Sierra Club to a lovely riparian area in the middle of the desert. (Riparian means relating to the banks of a natural course of water.) At the base of this looming rock formation

is a lovely grotto, like a natural shower stall, with water cascading down the walls (I’ve been told that when the area isn’t on drought alert, there is so much water, it is very much like a shower, and perhaps the local tribes once used it for such a purpose.)

I have other trips planned — I’ve been invited on a walking tour of secret stairways, and I have tickets to Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all male dance troupe that is supposedly as funny as they are accomplished. I am also planning to plan even more trips, maybe take myself on a date since I’m not having any luck finding anyone on the online dating sites, perhaps even go away for a weekend by myself. I’ll keep you posted.

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Posted in culture, life, photography. Tags: Arastre Falls, grotto, Marilyn Monroe Palm Springs, Palm Springs Follies, riparian area, waterfall. 6 Comments »

Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 288

January 16, 2014 — Pat Bertram

GTGYthmb I’ve come a long way in the three years since I wrote the following journal entry. Saturdays have ceased to be difficult, though I still don’t understand the nature of life or death. Still don’t understand the point of it all, but the questions don’t haunt me quite as much as they did during the first years after the death of my life mate/soul mate. I’m learning to live without him, learning even to want to live without him. Sometimes I see his death as freeing us — me — from the horrors of his dying, and I don’t want to waste the sacrifice he made.

I still yearn to talk to him, though. I miss talking to him, miss his insights, miss the neverending conversation. (“Neverending” is a misnomer — the conversation that began the day we met and continued for decades until he got too sick to hold up his end of the dialogue, did eventually end.) He was easy to talk to. He never misunderstood what I said. I could make a simple comment to him, and he understood it was a simple comment. He didn’t make a big issue out of it, just answered back appropriately. It seems now every remark I make to anyone becomes a major deal as I try to explain over and over again what I meant by the first remark. It’s exhausting.

I’m grateful we met and had so many years together. Grateful for all the words we spoke to each other. Grateful I once had someone to love. Grateful that when my time comes to die, he won’t be here to see me suffer. Grateful he won’t have to grieve for me or be tormented by unaswerable questions.

Excerpt from Grief: The Great Yearning

Day 288, Grief Journal

Saturday, again. I stayed in bed all morning reading because I did not want to get up and face another Saturday. Friday nights and Saturdays continue to be difficult. I watched movies last night until my private witching hour of 1:40am.

The longer Jeff is gone, the more I see what I’ve lost. When we were together, everything was normal, so I couldn’t see how extraordinary our lives were. We created all our own recipes and fixed all our own meals, built our own business, spent years researching the mysteries of the world. And we had such wonderful marathon talks that lasted for days. We didn’t try to convince the other of our position—we each brought truth and thought to the conversation, and together we created a greater reality. There was no reason to argue—it was never about his opinion versus mine. It was about the truth—the truth as far as we could reconstruct it together.

A woman who lost her mate four months after I lost Jeff asked me the other day if I loved Jeff more now than when he was alive, and in a way I do. The problems of his growing ill health got in the way the last few years, clouding my vision of him. Now that those problems and my reaction to them are no longer a factor, I can see the truth of him again (or at least more of the truth than I did) and the love shines through.

Grief comes and goes, but love stays. And grows.

Click here to find out more about Grief: The Great Yearning

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Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: grief and gratitude, grief and healing, grief and searching for meaning, Grief: The Great Yearning, neverending conversation. 1 Comment »

Waiting for Late-Blooming Genius to Flower

January 12, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I’m not a creative genius by any means, and that’s probably a good thing. A large percentage of such geniuses (77% for novelists and 87% for poets) suffer from some sort of mental disturbance — schizophrenia, cognitive disorders, depression, bipolarism, neuroses, alcoholism. I don’t even have the sort of mental dissociation that many creative non-geniuses have, such as sitting back and letting my characters tell the story, like some form of spirit writing. My characters never do anything that I didn’t intend them to do, they never take on a life of their own, they never appear to me in my dreams. They are a deliberate construct, created by carefully chosen words.

On the other hand, there is still a chance that I will end up as a one of those poor tormented souls. There are two kinds of genius — the wunderkind kind where a person is born with their genius, and the late bloomer kind where a person develops their genius through experience and trial and error. (To the extent that I have a talent for writing, mine is the late blooming kind. I tried to write a novel when I was young, but when I sat down to write, hoping the words would flow, my mind was a complete blank. Throughout the years, though, I did learn how to write.)

There is another possibility for such late-blooming genius to flower in me. Dan Chiasson, writing about poet Marianne Moore who became a star in her seventies, said “Poets often make a sudden advance with the death of their parents, as though a curfew has suddenly been lifted; for some, it happens just at the moment the imagination has stalled.”

If this “curfew” is lifted from other creative types, too, then when I am free from the responsibilities of looking after my father, my creativity could erupt. (And anyway, I used to be a poet once upon a time, so either way, the curfew lifting could be a boon.) I have the stalled imagination, that’s for sure — for several years, I haven’t been able to write much of anything except blog posts with sporadic forays into fiction writing — so who knows what will happen in the coming years. I just hope that if genius decides to descend on me, I get to keep my normalcy. I have no desire to suffer from any sort of mental disturbance. I’ll be satisfied with being just a garden-variety, everyday, creative non-genius who writes magnifient books.

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Posted in books, culture, writing. Tags: creative genius, creative genius and mental disorders, Dan Chiasson, late-blooming genius, Marianne Moore. 1 Comment »

Where Do the Misfits Fit?

January 10, 2014 — Pat Bertram

This is a strange world we live in where a person can get arrested for having a beard. I don’t have a beard, and I wasn’t arrested, but a relative was. Or maybe it wasn’t his beard that got him arrested. It could be that because of his sciatica, he was walking with a lurch, and that’s what attracted attention.

He was walking down a non-residential street about a block from where I am staying, and the cops stopped him. He told them he was on his way here and to call me and I would vouch for him. Instead, they took him to jail way out in a part of town I would never want to visit in the day, let alone at 10:00 at night. (I had to go back again at 12:30am because they wouldn’t release him.) The arrest report lists his crime as being intoxicated in a public place, and he might have had something to drink, I don’t know — but he wasn’t unruly or doing anything but lurching down the street, his white beard like a beacon.

He’d also been arrested a couple of weeks before that for jaywalking.

Cripes. I jaywalk all the time — the crosswalks around here are about a mile apart, and so if I am on foot, generally I have to go way out of my way to get anywhere. And there is one intersection with a crosswalk that doesn’t have a walk signal. There are four different roads that converge on that spot, and considering turning cars and such, I take my life in my hands every time I step off a curb. Since that crosswalk is way out of my way, I generally jaywalk in the middle of the block where there is no traffic. I’ve been lucky so far about not getting a jaywalking ticket, but since I can’t afford a sheaf of $186 tickets, I’ve been doing the dangerous thing and using the crosswalk.

These and other episodes have made me wonder about people who don’t fit in our homogenized world. If you have a few drinks in a bar, and then go outside, you are breaking the law because you are intoxicated in a public place. But of course, the cops don’t hang around outside bars waiting for customers to emerge and arrest these lawbreakers. Instead, they arrest those who don’t fit in with the bar crowd, such as the intoxicated homeless. So basically, it’s being homeless that is the real crime.

What are people supposed to do who don’t fit? Our world is getting narrower and narrower, where we don’t want to deal with anything or anyone who is a nuisance or who doesn’t add glamour to our plastic world. In fact, there is a law currently being considered in the UK that could criminalize behavior deemed capable of causing a “nuisance or annoyance.” We don’t need such laws in the US — we have plenty of annoying laws on the books that can be used to criminalize the nuisances.

But it’s not just the armies of derelicts twho don’t fit in our world. A woman with two masters degrees was crying to me the other day because she doesn’t fit. She can’t find a job to fit her, doesn’t have the energy to work forty hours a week even if she did, has maxed out her credit cards, and has no place to stay but couches in friends’ houses.

In the larger sense, no matter who or what we are, we fit in with the world because we are all part of the whole. But in a more localized cultural context, not everyone fits. (Everyone thinks they are misfits because they might not be comfortable with their fit or they wish to do something else, but still, they are a cog in machinery of society. But there are some people who lack the ability to make the necessary compromises or to hold their tongue when it is politic to be silent, and so the machinery grinds them to dust.)

I don’t fit in the cultural world at large, either, and neither did my now deceased life mate/soul mate, but we did fit with each other. Currently, I have a place looking after my father. And then . . . I’ll have to figure out how to fit into the world (or figure out a way to make the world fit me), because a misfit in the twenty-first century is a precarious thing to be.

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Posted in culture, life. Tags: fitting into the world, intoxication in public, jaywalking, misfits, where do the homeless fit. 18 Comments »

Online Dating: Diane Lane I am Not

January 9, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Until the last month or so, the only thing I ever knew about online dating sites and services was what I’d heard second or third hand and seen in movies. I thought you signed up, paid a fee, filled out a questionnaire, and they found a perfect match for you.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who presumed the same thing since such a scenario seemed to be a major plot point in the movie Sneakers. The collaborators needed to bypass a voice recognition security device, so they had Mary McDonnell pose as a computer date for Stephen Tobolowsky and record the necessary words. All goes well until Ben Kingsley discovers that Mary is supposed to be Stephen’s date. He says, disbelieving, “A computer matched her with him?” And so the story took a turn for the worse for the collaborators.

Now that I know the truth about computer dating — at least the sites I signed up for — the movie seems a bit less riveting.

To the extent that the computers are matching me with anyone (it doesn’t seem as if they are really finding matches, just notifying me of a random mix of people in my current geographical area), they seem to think I am looking for an inarticulate, overweight, tattooed smoker who rides a motorcycle. (Um, no.) The two characters in the movie were a much better match for each other than any I’ve been paired with. In fact, when I was watching the movie, I thought that very thing, that the two characters had a lot in common — both were educated, fastidious, articulate, and lived well.

Another movie that deals with online dating sites as a major plot mover is Must Love Dogs. Diane Lane seemed to find plenty of dates almost immediately, yet after five weeks, I haven’t managed to connect with a single person. Of course, she is Diane Lane, and I obviously am not. Also, the photo used for her profile was her high school photo, and that makes a big difference. As I wrote before, a woman’s desirability online peaks at 21. At 26, women have more online pursuers than men. By 48, men have twice as many online pursuers as women.

What started out as a sort of a leap into the future or maybe even just a fun dating game has fizzled into . . . nothing. One or two men did manage to tear themselves away from their motorcycles long enough to send impersonal replies, another two or three approached me and begged for my phone number and email address first thing as if they thought I were so desperate that I would pass out such information like pretzels at a singles bar. Such tactics might even work — apparently, a lot of people think the computers on the sites have more insight than they do, or the members are so psyched to go out that they go on a date with the first person who makes any sort of move.

I’m used to meeting people online who live on the other side of the mountains, the other side of the country, even the other side of the world, and it is a bit disconcerting to think I am making myself known to locals. Sometimes I wonder if anyone would recognize me if they saw me on the street, but I don’t think they would. So far, I’ve managed to remain invisible, both online and off.

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Posted in culture, internet, relationships. Tags: computer dating, computer matches, Diane Lane, Must Love Dogs online dating, online dating, Sneakers and online dating. 9 Comments »

Why I Signed Up for an Online Dating Site

January 8, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I never thought I’d join an online dating site. I’m not particularly interesting in dating, and I don’t really care if I never fall in love again, but I would like to have friends. The sad truth is, after a certain age, meeting people is difficult, especially if you’d like to make friends with someone approximately your own age and with approximately your level of fitness. It isn’t necessary to be with someone your own age, of course, but it is nice to be with someone who has the same general memories you do. (What the heck does an old man talk about with a much younger woman, or an old woman with a young man? But maybe talking isn’t the point . . .) And it’s nice to be able to do things together. So often, one of a couple is active and the other inactive, which adds an extra bit of frustration to the relationship. For example, if one person wants to go out dancing and the other wants to just loll around watching television, they either compromise, grow apart, or never grow close in the first place.

When you’re young, people your own age are everywhere. If you attend a big state college, for example, you live in a world of tens of thousands of people about your own age, the vast majority of whom are not married. Everywhere you go, you see people your own age, talk to people your own age, connect with people your own age, bump into people your own age, make friends with people your own age, meet potential mates your own age.

And then all of a sudden one day decades later, you wake up to find yourself in a world where no one is your age. Ever since the death of my life mate/soul mate, I’ve met a lot of people in a grief support group, the Sierra Club, yoga and exercise classes. Guess how many people approximately my age I’ve met during the past four years. 4. That’s it. 4. Three women, one man. If you forget the chronological age and just go by relative fitness age — people who can walk, move without a lot of pain, have relatively few physical limitations — that number is also 4, just a different 4. All women.

My life mate/soul mate died relatively young, leaving me in a strange twilight world. Most people my age are married and married people generally do things as a couple and are friends with other couples. Guess how many people of any age or gender I’ve met who I can call up on the spur of the moment and ask to meet me for lunch (or whatever). 0. Even those who aren’t married are in committed relationships or are taking care of an aged parent or young grandchildren. Many have jobs, as would I if I weren’t here to look after my father.

I’m not interested in dating for the purposes of mating. Nor am I playing the dating game to find love. But I do not intend to be a hermit the rest of my life, and the way the society is set currently set up, unless I go out and actively search for people to be friends with, I am doomed to a life of aloneness.

I’m extremely personable, able to talk to or listen to anyone in just about any circumstances, and I have a radiant smile. And yet, despite my various physical activities, social events, and familial obligations, I spend most of my time alone or online. It would be nice to meet someone I can call up late at night when I am most lonely and just say hi.

Actually, I’m even getting used to the aloneness and loneliness, which is a good thing. Even though I have joined three dating sites (one paid and two free) I have yet to make a connection with anyone. (Which seems strange to me, considering how many friends I have made online over the years.)

I don’t know what the answer is for me or anyone in my position. If I could, I’d go home to my life mate/soul mate, but that is not an option, so I can only go forward, and in this cyber age, online dating sites, with all their limitations, seem to be the way to go.

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Posted in culture, internet, relationships. Tags: joining an online dating site, making friends in mid life, meeting people your own age, searching for friends, why online dating. 6 Comments »

Alternatives to Online Dating Sites

January 7, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Ever since I mentioned that I signed up for an online dating site, people have been suggesting alternative ways to meet people. Apparently, despite all the wonderful stories we hear about two people meeting on one of those sites and living happily ever after (well, at least happily ever after up until now), a lot of women have terrible experiences, such as the woman who agreed to go out with a guy who looked good online and communicated well in messages but showed up for the date in pajamas. Yikes.

To make sure I don’t lose this list, I thought I’d post it here. Feel free to use any of the suggestions or add tips of your own.

1. Hikes with the Sierra Club. When I heard that the local Sierra Club did a group walk three nights a week, I knew that was for me! I’ve met a lot of wonderful people on the walk — all that adrenaline and endorphins make this an easy way of getting to know people. I’ve even made some good friends.

2. Bird walks with the local Audubon. A friend suggested this, and she said that for some reason the bird watchers (in more than one locality) have been the friendliest and funniest of all groups.

3. Trips with a local astronomy club to look at the stars.

4. Follow your interests. Join clubs or do volunteer work in fields that interest you, such as Habitat for Humanity, museums, garden clubs, book clubs.

5. Join a local dance club.

6. Use http://www.MeetUp.com to activities and groups in your vicinity. There are discussion groups of all kinds, dance groups, special interest groups, and just for fun groups.

7. Participate in church and church activities

8. Take classes at community colleges — art, music, acting.

9. Join a local theater groups.

10. Join a gym.

11. Do yoga or Tai Chi.

12. Take a pottery class.

13. Go to a donut shop every morning and talk to five people.

14. High tea. I’ve never heard of other towns doing this, but where I’m staying they have coffee, tea and cookies once a month at the town hall. (Cookies and tea is not exactly a high tea, but I suppose anything in the high desert can be considered “high.”) I have it on my calendar to attend this month.

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